Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - GOTY Edition

For me, this was the most difficult boss I had faced. By far. Seems like a pattern with this game.

Like with other bosses, the key is learning how to best react to everything he does. With most previous bosses, deflecting was best. Owl does such insane posture damage when you deflect that you need to dodge whenever you can and deflect only when you absolutely have to.

Some random thoughts:

Your focus will be on chipping away at Owl's health and not so much worrying about filling his posture bar.

Remember that your posture bar will deplete more quickly A) when you actively block and B) the fuller your health is. I tried to keep my health as full as possible to help with managing my posture bar.

I found the Whirlwind Slash combat art to be very useful in getting damage in as it would almost always hit twice where normal attacks would land once, then get blocked.

Owl has two phases. I used an Ako's Sugar at the start of each for extra attack power.

Truth be told- it probably took me 30 attempts to win this battle. I got stomped pretty badly for a while, then started doing better as I figured out how to react to his attacks. It almost looks easy in my successful attempt: There are a few key times to get damage in. The best is when he throws two shuriken, then does a jumping flip to downward slash. Dodge to the right, then follow up with a Whirlwind Slash. Feel free to follow up with more attacks as they can land depending on his follow up.

He has a few standard multi-swipe attacks. If you can figure these out, you can deflect until the final one, then dodge it and counterattack. Just be careful that he isn't swinging again and be ready to dodge before trying to attack.

He will also toss out a bomb that explodes with a cloud of smoke. If you are within the explosion radius, you'll get a debuff that lasts 30 seconds and prevents the use of consumables- including healing. He is vulnerable briefly during the bomb toss animation so try to get some damage in without being debuffed.

His second phase is similar to the first but has a few differences. His jumping backwards/shuriken throw instead throws out a swathe of poison liquid that leaves an arc of poison gas. Get away to avoid being poisoned.

He will also occasionally punch the ground, which releases a large cloud of harmless smoke. This will break your lock-on and impair visibility briefly.

Don't get discouraged. Persistence is key. Good luck.

In this video guide I will show you how to defeat the Great Shinobi Owl. Now you can only fight him once you get the lotus of the palace and the shelter stone. Now once you have these you can head back to the Ashina Castle, but you will have to work your way back up to the top all over again. Find an idol and if you want skip skip everything and work your way up to Owl. Now for the fight all you really need to use is whirlwind and attack him only when he does his shuriken moves. He will do two different types of shuriken moves. One of his moves is when he throws the shuriken and does a charge attack with his sword. Another is when he throws the shuriken and does a jump slam attack. Now both of these are good times to use the whirlwind attack. Now you may be able to get some other hits when he does some slow heavy attacks but he may attack so be careful. Other than that he second deathblow is not much different and use the same openings. It will take awhile but just be patient and slowly whittle him down and beat him. The achievement will pop at the end of the fight.